


Sleep, Rest

by jordieey



Series: Trust Takes Time [6]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Coronavirus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Lock Down Fest, Locked In, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, No Plot/Plotless, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24075454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jordieey/pseuds/jordieey
Summary: My response to the coronavirus. Natasha and Tony find comfort in each other in a situation largely out of their control.(Not set in any specific time in the series.No real plot. Just feels.)
Relationships: Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark
Series: Trust Takes Time [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/992754
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	Sleep, Rest

There was something about COVID-19 (coronavirus, whatever) that pissed Tony right off. 

Actually, no; Tony knew exactly what about it pissed him off. It was a big fucking problem that he couldn’t solve. Tony was a narcissistic bastard, but he wasn’t so full of himself that he thought he could solve all the problems of the world. He couldn’t stop his parents from being killed; he couldn’t stop Steve fucking Rogers from being a self-rightous prick (though he’d tried); he couldn’t stop world hunger (he wished he could); and he couldn’t stop himself and Natasha from having PTSD (though they were working on that). 

Tony knew he couldn’t solve everything. He /knew/ that. But that didn’t stop the cloud of guilt that followed him everywhere––that made itself known every time he saw a problem he wished he could fix.

Because he was a mechanic. He fixed things. That’s just what he did. 

Tony didn’t know how long he’d been down here, tinkering with this and that. He’d already come up with a blueprint for a new suit for Natasha (because that's what he did, okay? He protected the people he cared about). She already had her Ghost armor that she used to go on anonymous missions with Iron Man. But this one was a close rendition of her Black Widow armor (one of them, anyway). It was made from vibranium, since Tony suspected T’Challa felt bad for him these days. The suit would mold around Natasha’s body with ease, leaving no wrinkles or gaps that would impede her ability to move, while at the same time containing various hidden pockets that would allow Natasha to hide her frighteningly sharp knives. 

Flexible and bulletproof. Much more protective than what Natasha had been wearing in the past. 

Speaking of Natasha…

“You have been down here for much too long,” she whispered right next to his ear.

“Fuck!” Tony pitched forward, dropping the pen he’d been using. In the time it took him to grip the table, paper crinkling under his hands, Natasha had moved to his side. The pen rested securely in her hand, saved from its fall. She cocked an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. 

With a groan, Tony rested his head on the worktable, panting and squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Fuck,” he said again. “Sure, go ahead. Just give me a heart attack. Not like that would kill me or anything.”

Natasha’s hand landed on his back, thumb pressing into the tense muscles there. 

“Моя любовь, you can be quite dramatic sometimes.”

Tony glared at her and then rolled his eyes. He turned back to the table, snatching his pen from Natasha. “I’ll be up in a few minutes. I just need to––”

Natasha’s hand grabbed his wrist in a vice like grip, stopping his movements. She used her other arm to pull him closer, her arm like a bar against his stomach. A bit too similar to how she’d held him when she first showed up. 

A feather light kiss was pressed to his neck. Natasha’s hair tickled his ear. “You are not at fault for what is happening to the world, mоя любовь. I know that it kills you, knowing there is only so much you can do.” (Here, Natasha’s voice caught. Barely noticeable to anyone but those who knew her well) “It kills me, too. But, as tempting as it is, we can’t dwell on guilt. You know what Kenneth” (their therapist) “would say.”

Natasha’s words had the opposite effect than what she’d intended. How could he be so selfish, dwelling on his own guilt and forgetting how this was affecting his wife?

He’d tried to do what he could to help with the virus. Gods, he’d tried. Donated as much money as he could afford, paid his employees who couldn’t work, tried to design masks and gloves that would protect its wearers. One hundred percent; nothing sneaking past even a small opening. 

He’d made sure to be in his Iron Man suit whenever leaving the tower. At least that way he avoided spreading the virus or contracting it himself. 

But Natasha… Natasha was a spy. She’d once been an assassin. There was little she could do to fight against something like COVID-19 except staying home. Yes, she had some money set aside from her days as an assassin, which she only used for the purpose of donating to people who needed it. The only good way to spend blood money, she’d said. Yes, she’d gone out as the Ghost, whooping the asses of people who deserved it.

But a virus wasn’t something her various skills could handle. And for someone like Natasha to be forced to stay home so often…

Tony sighed, resting his elbows on the table. His head dropped onto his hands, smearing the grease already there. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Natasha rubbed his shoulders, pressing another kiss to his neck. “Take a shower, get something to eat, and come join me in bed. No stalling and no detours. If you stall, I’ll know. Friday?”

“She’s correct, boss,” Friday confirmed. Tony wondered, not for the first time, just whose side she was on.

“Understood, Agent Romanoff.”

Natasha gave his hair a light tug and walked off. Tony turned around just in time to see her red bob cut turn around a corner. 

****

It took Tony half an hour to follow Natasha’s orders––partly because he couldn’t resist checking the Coronavirus Resource Center website. The recovery rate from COVID-19 was pretty damn high, but fuck it if this virus didn’t want to wipe out the human race. It wouldn’t, but it wanted to. 

Friday, traitor that she was, turned off Tony’s StarkPad with a snippy “I don’t believe Agent Romanoff would approve, boss.”

Tony, piece of cold pizza halfway to his mouth, dropped it and glared at the ceiling. “Friday, baby girl, just leave Daddy alone for a minute, won’t you?” 

“That’s not what you made me for, boss.”

Why did Tony ever think it was a good idea to make AIs that talked back to him?

Still, it had the desired effect. In another twenty minutes, Tony was stepping out of his bathroom, clad in a grease-free tshirt and some sweatpants. 

Natasha was waiting in their bed, red hair a beautiful mess, wearing Tony’s Doctor Who shirt that she had claimed as her own during her first month back. Sort of. She preferred wearing Tony’s shirts after he did; when they smelled of grease and sweat and whatever else he’d gotten into while wearing it. 

It took Tony some time to figure out why Natasha kept stealing his shirts from the laundry room. When he did––well, even when he was still struggling to forgive her, Tony was whipped. There’d always been a part of him that was a little bit in love with Natasha, even when he and Pepper were still a thing. 

Tony walked over to the desk he’d added on the far side of the room, tossing his shirt over the back of the plush leather-backed chair there. Switching to a new bedroom seemed like the right thing to do once it became clear that this whole sleeping together thing wouldn’t be ending anytime soon. Tony would always look back fondly on his relationship with Pepper, but being held by Natasha in the same room he’d made love to Pepper seemed… disrespectful somehow.

So, they’d switched. When quarantine hit, Tony had roped Natasha into painting the boring grey walls a dark blue that always made him feel like they were submerged in an ocean. Those two days had been some of the most fun Tony experienced in a while. Kissing Natasha and smearing paint on her neck earned him paint in his hair that took a week to get out. Tony wouldn’t trade those memories for anything. 

Especially when Natasha had looked him right in the eye, blue paint on her cheek, hair in disarray and green eyes serious as she said, calmly, that she loved him. 

“You’re reading that?” Tony asked as he pulled back grey the covers, lying down next to Natasha. 

Natasha looked up from her copy of Daniel Silva’s The Black Widow, raising an eyebrow at him. “Was I not supposed to?” The twinkle in her eyes said she knew exactly why he’d gotten her the book.

Truthfully, it had been both a spur-of-the-moment decision and a joke. Once this whole pandemic hit (when Tony realized it would be months before they could go out when they pleased), Tony had gone online, looking for books, games, movies, experiments––anything to himself and Natasha entertained when they weren’t out in their armor, doing what little they could to help. 

When the book arrived in the mail, Tony placed the book in front of Natasha and said, “How much you wanna bet that’s based on you?”

Going by the look on Natasha’s face (a mixture of exasperated and fond), he hadn’t actually expected her to read it. And yet, here she sat, doing just that.

“If this is meant to be based on me,” Natasha added, bookmarking her page, “then it is loosely based.” 

Tony leaned back against his large, fluffy pillow, looking up at her. “How so?”

“Well, for one,” Natasha said with a smirk, “I am not a doctor.”

“You sure?” Tony wiggled his eyebrows at her, loving the twinkle in her green eyes. “I could definitely see you wielding a scalpel.”

The slight upturn of Natasha’s pink lips disappeared as she glared down at him. For a moment, Tony worried he’d hit the wrong nerve and started to sit up, an apology already on his lips. And then Natasha rolled her eyes.

“Shellhead,” she scoffed, shoving his head back down onto the pillow with a calloused hand. Tony grabbed it and pressed a kiss to the palm. 

“Spider,” he shot back. And the smirk was back. 

A comfortable silence fell over them. Natasha placed her book on the bedside table. Tony laced his hands behind his head staring up at the ceiling. 

When Natasha started to run her fingers through his hair, Tony sighed, feeling weeks’ worth of tension begin to melt from his frame. He closed his eyes, allowing Natasha to pull him closer so his head rested on her stomach. 

“Tony,” Natasha said seriously. He tensed, earning a light tug. “What is happening in the world is not your fault. You must understand that. You are not responsible for what is happening. No one is.”

“Tell that to Chen Lihua,” Tony said, voice bitter.

Chen Lihua was an employee at Stark Industries, a beautiful woman with an equally beautiful wife and children. Many of his employees hadn’t been happy when Tony hired her, for various reasons. Like, seriously, take your pick. 

But Tony had taken one look at her resume and knew he needed to hire her. The woman was a genius, and like Tony predicted, an absolute blessing to the company. Thus, she became one of the big players in the company, so successful that Pepper could be seen discussing various business plans with her on several occasions. Chen Lihua was never left out of an important meeting.

Unless she had to take care of her family. Tony wasn’t that much of an asshole.

And then the virus hit. And a group of Stark Industries workers saw fit not only to harass her, but to try landing a few punches. 

She was out of the hospital now, but the guilt still remained. 

“Chen Lihua doesn’t blame you for what happened.” Natasha grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. “No does her family. Stop blaming yourself; stop overworking yourself.” A dangerous glint appeared in her eyes, one that promised pain is Tony didn’t comply. “Go to sleep, now, or you will not like the consequences.”

Tony didn’t doubt her. 

It was as though Natasha’s words gave Tony’s body permission to tell him how unhappy it was. Suddenly, it was almost impossible to keep his eyes open. The sandwich he’d made himself sat heavy in his stomach. 

And Natasha––she felt so soft and strong at the same time. Tony let his eyes fall closed, setting against her. 

He felt Natasha wrap her arms around him, pulling him closer. 

“Sleep, Tony.”

Tomorrow, Tony would build more safety gear for those who needed it. He’d despair over the rising number of deaths and feel even more guilty. Like he should be doing more. 

He’d work himself to the bone, trying to save the world from something he knew was beyond his control. 

But for now, wrapped in the safety of Natasha’s arms, he slept.

**Author's Note:**

> "Моя любовь." Russian. My love.
> 
> Note: I do write things other than fanfiction. If you're interested in checking out my more original works, I'm willing to share my Instagram account. I thought I wouldn't post it here, in case forms of advertisement are not appreciated.   
> Just let me know :)


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